Beast of the Storm
by Mister Vix
Summary: Fate is a cruel, cruel Beast, one that Ralph can simply not escape.


Beast of the Storm

***

Disclaimer: I do not own Lord of the Flies! 

***

Chapter 1:

Isle of the Beast

***

Author's Notes: BOOM.  This is a weird little thing...yee!

I love the Lord of the Flies.  The book, not the dead pig.  So, I took the story, and decided to see what happened if I wrote a continuation.  Hopefully, I don't screw all the character's personalities over too badly...

ALSO!  I have no idea where on Earth this story may go.  I'm just allowing it to run as it will.  Be prepared for disoriented madness and whole sections that don't really make sense.

Another point, I'm not really great at keeping the supernatural out of my stories.  I always eventually wanna have something completely and utterly impossible.  I'll try hard, since Lord of the Flies is _not_ sci-fi, but...y'never know.  If I do screw up and start jabbering unrealistically, feel free to beat me over the head.

*****************

He was huddled in a corner of the tossing ship.  A storm was wailing, making the floor beneath him shift and squeal.  Outside, overhead, the clouds did battle, behemoths of silver and black and all the shades of gray in between, clawing about with talons of jagged white, roaring in voices of sound-shattering pressure.  He pulled the thick blanket tighter about his shaking shoulders, his long, matted hair hiding his face.  That fair hair was streaked with dirt and ash, twisted 'round bits of leaves and sticks, and the eyes that hid beneath it were slightly wild with fear; glazed with a hollowed look.  There was a curtain in his mind, and it flapped before his sight, blinding him to where he was, to what he was, to why he was.  He didn't want to forget those three things, but every time that curtain was whisked aside, he realized he almost had, and it frightened him.  He was losing himself, losing his mind in the dank, dark belly of the mighty ship, every bit as easily as he had been losing it in the trigger-violence heat and brightness of that bloody island.

"Ralph?" it was Samneric, the twins nearby, wearing identical expressions of intoxicated, grieving fear and illness.  The constant side-to-side rock of the ship unsettled the pair more than it did their fair-haired ex-chief, and they clung to one another, seeking stability and relief from the nauseous motion.  "Ralph?  You awake, Ralph?"  The boy with the shuddering shoulders waited a long moment before replying, and his voice was quiet, harsh.

"Yeah," was the only response.  He kept his unseeable gaze locked on the rolling floor.  There was a low groan from somewhere in the bowels of the ship, and one of the littleuns present in the room, wrapped in a pale blanket, whimpered softly before shushing himself into uneasy sleep.

"What d'you think, Ralph?  What d'you think's gonna happen, now we're rescued?" the twins questioned, watching him like he was still their leader, still the chief of the island.  That forsaken, terrible place was left behind them, now, and they didn't need to worry about having a chief anymore...

"I don't know."  The reply was short, and Ralph shifted, turning himself away, hiding in his corner.  He didn't want to be looked upon for action or knowledge now; he wanted to stay hidden in his little corner, to keep away from all of them.  Fear still twisted in him, fear that should've died with rescue; fear that clung like a parasite, giggling as it ate at him, mocking his inability to banish it.  The twins realized his unwillingness to talk, and fell silent, holding on to one another in the darkness.  There was another bellyaching grumble from within the ship, one that started low and resonant and suddenly wrenched itself into a high squawl, accompanied by a terrifying shriek, metallically agonized, and a group of littleuns, clustered together for comfort in this vicious storm, burst into crying.  From an unidentifiable quarter of the ship, one child's voice raised torturedly, cracking over the fearful notes,

"The Beast is chasing us in the storm!"  The horrifying message was taken up immidiately by the more brain-addled of the island children, and those with any amount of proper sense remaining in their heads could do nothing but tremble in their white-blanket trappings, listening to the howling of the storm and the crying of those children who were too delirious or young to understand the truth of the noises below.  Ralph squeezed his eyes tightly shut, wishing they would hold their silence.  All the littleuns were wailing tearfully in fear now, crying out desperately for salvation from the Beast that wasn't there, and the men—the grown-ups—that ran the ship could do nothing to quiet them.  They were calling for their chief, for Jack or Ralph, their leaders, to do something, to protect them.  Ralph didn't know what Jack might be doing; for all the fair-haired child knew, the self-proclaimed hunter chief could be one of those idiots who was wailing their lungs out.  

Finally Ralph stood, with the intent to try his hardest to silence the growing terror...he was not given the chance, when suddenly the ship bucked, with a splattered shredding noise and a sequence of crunching bangs.  All the island children who had the misfortune to be standing at the time were thrown violently to the damp floor, and from somewhere below was a gushing, sucking sound.  The frame of the ship around them shuddered as it tilted unnaturally, the floor snarling and moaning as it was slowly bent, thrown off-kilter.  

"_IT'S THE BEAST!  THE BEAST!!!_"  The ship plunged.

***

He rolled open his eyes, his head ringing like a gong, and the curtain was a thick blotter on his mind.  Only the curtain was worse now, thicker, and he couldn't sweep it away, couldn't rid himself of it.  He clawed for memories, tried to tear the curtain apart.  The fabric fluttered and shifted in his grip, twisting away, settling itself stubbornly in place over his thoughts.  He'd...he'd been...he'd been hit in the head.  It was a startling realization.  He'd been hit in the head with something.  _How?  Where?_  He raised a hand to the fiery line which was the hammer for the bell, and his fingers came away sticky and hot with bright red, confirmation that his theory was correct.  He began shivering; looked around.  Where was he?  It was a desolate rock of a place, and the surf bit and gnawed at its edges, a low, constant roar.  He looked out farther, across the expanse of angry gray waters, and saw an island in the distance...an island of pink rock, smoke drifting lazily above it.  He twitched and twisted away in fear of that place, though he didn't know why, and looked behind him.  Here was a second island, the black rock of his awakening place giving way to deep red granite, that was worn to pink-white at the edges by the waves tearing at its sides.  As the rocky platform spread itself slowly out, sand, then soil, and finally foliage began, peaking upwards near the center, following the mountainous spine of the island.  

A low, metallic grinding that suddenly rose above the waves caught his attention, and he looked down at the snarling surf.  And outwards.  A ship, rolled on its side, its belly torn open in a long slash, saltwater pouring in and out of it in a steady rythm as it was pushed along the unseen rocks beneath the waves, the ones that had apparently gutted it.  _What happened?_  He must've been on that ship...on it and something happened...something...as he looked down at the waves, an image suddenly filled his head, startling, horribly clear; _someone_, he knew them but he couldn't remember their name_, falling, bouncing down a cliff, they hit a shelf at the bottom, their body flung out its limbs in a desperate gesture as their skull split, crimson rushed out as though eager to meet the oncoming sea_.  _The water gulped him up, took him away greedily_.  _He was gone_.

The fair-haired boy shook his head, confused and frightened, and reeled away from the sight of the pounding surf.  The sharp stone sliced at the soles of his feet, and the salt coating the miserable little jut of rock stung viciously in the cuts.  He ran from the biting rock, across the narrow red bridge that connected to the larger land, and stopped, swaying dizzily, once his hurting feet found sand.  He sank to his knees, putting his hands to his aching head.  The curtain had moved, but now he wished it hadn't; wished he hadn't remember this person, whoever it was, plunging to their death down the face of a cliff.  And what made it worse was that he didn't know their name, didn't know why they had died.  Just remembered that body falling, bouncing, splitting, bleeding.

"Ralph!" the cry drew his attention, stopped his mind running in panicked circles.  There was a person coming towards him, their steps off-center and sending them in a listing diagonal, courtesy of a blood-soaked twist to their right leg.  The person's hair was long and drenched, as his own was, and they pushed it back from their face every few steps, only to have it flop forward once again, defiantly.  "Ralph!"

"...what?" the fair-haired boy replied.  He assumed that his name was Ralph, then, as there was no one else around, and the lame-legged fellow seemed to know him.  

"What happened, Ralph?" the unkown approacher asked, his voice afraid, trembling.  He went down beside Ralph, more falling than sitting.  "Do you...do you think..."

"I don't know," the fair-haired boy replied, watching the sand beneath him.  His shoulders twitched, and he gulped, swallowing down a sudden constriction in his throat.  "I think...I think I hit my head..."  The fear in the other's expression redoubled, and he shuddered.  

"You mean..."

"I don't...remember."

***

A gush of cold, stinging water shocked him to wakefullness.

_The Beast_.  He opened his eyes slowly, pushed himself up in a lethargic fashion.  _Slow, slow_._  Keep slow_.  Where was he?

The screaming littleuns were gone.  The cries of fear, cries for mercy from an unseen evil, all were gone, eaten up by the slow roar of the thrashing waves.  He stood, wrapping his arms about himself, shivering.  He was drenched, head to foot, in saltwater; it made his reddish hair hang soddenly, made the scrapes and cuts that had mysteriously appeared all along his body burn like fire.  

_The ship crashed_.  He turned around, looked out, saw the ocean frothing in a lazy insanity, the black waters churning without purpose, beating themselves senseless against the rocks.  Every time, the spray came up like a waterfall in reverse, covering him, chilling him.  He ignored the stubborn sea, keeping his gaze travelling.  

The ship lay in a shallow trough along the side of the island, where the black, open sea snaked cleverly over jagged rocks, hiding them under its angered swishing.  A trap.  If it hadn't been for the storm, the men would have seen the trough.  But the storm had blinded them to it, and in the fury of the wind, they had erronously listed too far towards the island; the rising crest of a wave had pitched them onto it, across it, gouging open the belly of the ship.  The trough was its grave, and it rocked slowly back and forth as the sea played with its corpse.  He could see that the ocean had other toys, as well; the men who'd been on deck, instead of down in the ship's bowels, had been washed off by marauding waves.  Their bodies drifted and bobbed in the trough, killed by the cold shock, and the sudden stop at the rock bottom.  There might be some grown-ups left alive, if they weren't on the ship's deck.  He didn't know what to think of that.

Jack shifted his stance, resting on the balls of his feet, hunched over his knees, his open palms resting on the rocks.  With the next spray of biting water he scurried away from the edge, out of the reach of the ocean's claws.  His silent gaze turned upwards.  Before him was a cliff of faded redrock, pitted from the gnaw of the high tides and splattered frequently with sea-bird's leavings.  Hooking his fingers into one of the rough dips in the rock's surface, he ascended the cliff easily, pulling himself up over the rim, onto a flat sheet of red granite.  Before him was an island, so like the one they had just been on...but different as well.  A silvery ribbon, a stream, cascaded in a small falls off an upper lip of the reddish mountain, pooling just below it into a small, mirror-bright pond, from which the ribbon continued onwards, winding down and vanishing amongst the trees.  The mountain itself was built like a huge staircase, squarish blocks piled one on top of another, until it finally spiked up at the top in a shattered peak.  Below the staircase construction, the mountain was smoother, layed over with dirt and vegetation, sloping downwards towards a more blank patch of earth, which gave way to sand and finally to rock.  Jack's eyes narrowed, focusing on the place where the sand and rock merged.  There were a pair of people there, sitting in the sand, but from the distance he couldn't tell who they were.  He stood slowly, ignoring the stiff pain from the many superficial slices in his skin, and began a steady lope towards them.  A lope that slowed and then stopped when he saw who it was.  One of the twins was there, his leg torn, but it was his companion that slowed the redhead's steps.  

_Ralph_.

Suddenly Jack was faced with an odd situation.  He didn't know where his hunters were—scattered all along the coastline, likely, or else sunken to the bottom of the trough in an ocean grave—and he himself was not in the greatest fighting shape.  Ralph was hunched over, seated on the sand, but Jack could not tell if that meant he were exhausted or simply bored of standing.  The last thing Jack wanted now was to get into a fight he couldn't win.  His hands clenched at his sides, and he tossed his gaze about once more, looking for someone, anyone else.  His mouth twisted in a hunter's grin when he saw a familiar dark shape rising up over the cliff, near to where he himself had come from.

_Roger_.

***

The dark, heavy curtain twitched and shifted, but it didn't move far enough, didn't flick away, didn't let any light through.  He couldn't think, could only beg and plead that dreadful curtain to lift away.  No reprieve, the curtain was deaf to his pleas.

"What happened to me?  To us?" Ralph asked finally, looking up at the person before him.  He shifted a little, frowning contemplatively.

"We were stuck on an island," the reply came at last, unelaborate.  "And a buncha terrible stuff happened, and then the grown-ups came and rescued us...then there was a storm...and now we're here."  Ralph struggled with his curtain, to no avail, trying to recall this.  He looked behind him, seeing the drifting smoke from that second island on the horizon.  _Smoke_..._smoke_...The curtain shifted.

_He was crouched down, hidden, and a boulder roared past, tried to crush him, missed_._  He was running, mad with fear, and he was being hunted by unnatural monsters, monsters with painted faces and spears, monsters that hooted and howled as they chased after him.  Smoke began to fill the world, the trees were on fire, fire that laughed and snapped as it reached for him, and it was the monsters' fire, it was loyal to them_._  The fire he had tried so desperately to convince them they needed, now turned against him in a cruel blow of irony_.

Then the flash was gone, stored away, and the curtain twitched back to where it had been, leaving him in the dark.  _Laughing, laughing dark filled with monsters_..._the Beast_...__

***

Roger cast him a few sideways glances.  The darker boy had an angry red stripe across his shoulder, and was nicked in multiple places along his arms and legs, but he wasn't as patterned with cuts as Jack.  The redhead looked almost like he had an animal's camoflauged hide.  

As soon as Roger was within the concealing growth of the forest's screen, he paused.  Jack had told him he was to circle about, and wait for the redhead's signal; then they would close in on either side of Ralph, blocking him off from escape into the forest, forcing him back along the cliff, and catch him.  But what they were going to do once he was caught…Jack had not answered Roger when the dark-haired boy had asked.

"What are you up to, Jack…?" he muttered to himself, and continued through the screen, the long ferns brushing his legs softly, the trees, hanging with creepers and draping moss, reaching for him in a manner barely perceptable.  The ground was spongey, soft, and cool in the shade of the trees, contradicting with the humid heat in the air.

A toxic hiss warned him before he'd set his bare foot down.  He hopped back agilely, but the lightning streak of neon green had already snapped forward, thin fangs piercing his ankle, and then the snake was away, only to coil and glare murderously up at him with golden eyes from a short distance away.  He staggered, snatching up a stick, and neared the serpent, hungry for vengeance.  It drew back its head, opening bluish jaws in warning, and he brought the stick down, crushing through the emerald rope's skull.  It writhed pointlessly, flipping and twisting its sleek body, stilling only after a long struggle with inevitable death.

Roger stumbled onwards, but his ankle was swollen and painful, and he was beginning to feel too hot.  Soon he had to stop, seating himself on the soft ground, and then was on his side, panting.

***

Jack was waiting impatiently, but it became swiftly apparent that Roger was not going to emerge.  His eyes narrowed, and he twisted his hands uselessly.  He would have to take Ralph on his own…

He headed instead for the woods.  He would find Roger, and find out what was going on with this dissappearance.

***

_Flap_.  The curtain twitched.  Nothing came.  _Rustle_.  It fluttered like a dark moth's wing, beating a rapid tattoo on his brain that absorbed all thought, burnt it away, flickered, a candle flame.  _A nice house, ponies that would watch over the fence, a copper kettle_.  _Dark, smoke, fire, run, run, run_…

_Wait_.  _What was that?_  He turned around, staring down at the waterline, where the cliff ended abruptly, turning instead to a sink of stone that bowled downwards subtly until it met ocean.  Two men were approaching, coming up the stone slope, sodden.  One was bleeding profusely from a gash on his shoulder, the other limping.

_Flap_.  The curtain twtiched, but there was no swift, short flicker of memory, nothing suggesting of his lost past life.

The darker-haired had stood, but hesitated, watching the men approaching.  The limping one was watching his feet closely, as though he didn't trust them, and the bleeding one was helping to support him.

"What're we gonna do now, Ralph?" the boy looked at him fearfully.  The fair-haired slowly pushed his damp mess of blonde back from his face.

"I don't…know…"

***

He was silent.  The signs were right here, layed out in front of him on the soft, moss-covered earth.  Signs that this island…this island was less friendly than the last.

A dead snake, its body limp and cold.  A dead hunter, the dark boy curled up on the ground.  He was broken from his musings when there was a sudden crunch, undergrowth snapping underfoot.  Instantly he was crouched, ready to spring, sharp eyes watching intently.  _Crunch_.  Something approaching.  Something big, bigger than any pig.  The foliage was parted, and the man stepped through.

With his steely gray hair and brassy, brown-gold eyes, he cut an imposing figure, even battered and torn as he was.  But there was something odd, something wild in his body language.  Jack turned away from the corpse of snake-bitten Roger, watched silently as the man approached him and stared at him uncomprehendingly.

***

"What a horror," the bleeding man muttered, looking out across the ocean.  He didn't notice the two boys approaching him slowly from across the sands.

"Hello, sir," one spoke, startling him.  He whirled around, accidentally unbalancing his dazed companion, who spilled over onto the ground and layed there, not even thinking of getting back up.

"Oh, hello," the sailor said, trying to pretend he hadn't been taken by surprise.  The dark haired boy looked solemnly up at him, but the fair-haired seemed distracted, staring off into space.

"We should call an assembly, but we don't have the conch," the dark-haired said suddenly, mournfully.  The blonde looked at him, just for a moment, then he was off in his own little world once more…

***

_Flap, flap, flap_.  A moth's wing sweeping back and forth.  _The conch_.  _Assembly_.  He held onto those words, clung to them, like shelter in a storm.  _Conch_.  _A white shell lay glittering in a pool_.  _It sounded like a trumpet, a long, loud, brassy call_.  _Assembly_.  _The twister…the island_.  _Deterioration.  The Beast.  Pig hunting.  Jack, Jack, always Jack.  Piggy, one-eyed, none, the falling rock, gone, Simon gone a feral dance 'round a bloody fire._

_Kill the Beast.  Cut its throat.  Spill its blood._

_Kill the Beast.  Smash its head.  Bash it in._

Now he knew what'd happened.  Now he knew the old island.  But he didn't remember…from…before…

He looked up, turned around.  Watched the screen of trees, the bright flashing of miragelike birds.  And saw movement of something much larger.

"What's that?" he muttered, mostly to himself, taking a step towards the screen.  His question was answered as two people slipped out of the trees, onto the sand, and began heading along the whitened slope towards him at a steady pace.  It took him only moments to identify the red-haired boy approaching.

"Jack," he hissed.  The redheaded hunter, with the crimson-cut stripes all over his body, looked like some sort of animal, and he bore a stick that had been hastily broken into a jagged point.  The taller, the grown-up, stayed behind, standing in his tattered uniform as though he were at attention, uncaring that Jack was on a killing run straight for Ralph.

The sailor behind the twin and Ralph cleared his throat.

"Who's that, then?  And…ah…why might they be rushing at us like that?" he asked, but Ralph wasn't listening.  He turned and fled along the sandy slope, the twin breaking off and running the opposite direction.  The grown-up, with no idea of the animosity between the two boys, just stood there confused.

***

He watched it all dispassionately through his wild eyes.  Once a sailor with a few slight superstitions, but sometimes, those things can go out of all control.  The mind can be eaten through, reduced to a state of paranoid madness, as useless as a hole-filled sail.

_It's the Beast.  The Beast.  _The last statement before the death of the ship.  _The Beast.  The Beast._

He hadn't spent the time of terror on the first island.  But he'd a vivid imagination, and a tentative grip on reality, one thinner than even he realized.  Once the ship snapped, so had he, and for him, the Beast had become a monstrous, mysterious reality, coupled with superstition and fears held on since childhood that live in the back of the mind.

His serenely mad gaze traveled to the two men on the beach, standing before the bowl in the cliff.

_It's the Beast.  The Beast._  Mercy from the Beast.

***

To Ralph's credit, he'd nearly made it to the lee side of the forest when Jack closed the distance between them, feet skidding in the loose white sand.  The hunter was snarling murderously, panting slightly between growls, as he thrust his jagged-tipped spear at his intended prey.  Ralph dodged sideways, kicking a spray of sand at Jack, his feet sliding out from under him.  He turned the fall into an awkward roll, scrambling away from another jab of the stick.  Jack kicked out, catching his foe in the side, and Ralph grabbed his ankle, dragging him from his feet, pouncing on him.  Jack snarled again, baring his teeth, grabbing a lock of fair hair and tugging sharply.  Ralph retaliated by punching his adversary square in the stomache, knocking the wind out of him.  Jack's grip went slack, and Ralph took advantage of the moment to spring up and dash away again, into the forest.

"Yes, run!" Jack spat breathlessly after him.  "Run into the forest!  Hide with the snakes!"  He stood slowly, recovering his breath, and glared into the trees.  Ralph had vanished, getting past the screen and into the thick growth.  Jack knew he could track him, but first…first he wanted to try and find more of his hunters.

"You'll get yours, Ralph.  No smoke to save you here."


End file.
